NAZI INFLUENCE

Greymouth Evening Star, 23 April 1946, Page 7

NAZI INFLUENCE

AMERICAN JOURNALISTS’

SURVEY

CONDITIONS IN BAVARIA

NEW YORK, April 21

“Elements hostile to everything for which the United States fought the war” are said to be still clinging to power in the American zone of occupation in Germany, in spite of the cle-Nazification programme. They and their Nazi friends, according to the report, still enjoy special privileges, and threaten and even persecute the small minority of Germans who sincerely believe in democracy and want to help the occupying authorities, to establish it in Germany.

A survey by two New York Times correspondents for nearly three weeks disclosed that Nazis in the large cities, as well as in rural communities, in Bavaria, through nonNazi friends and sympathisers, still get preferred treatment from many Government agencies, and that the party has recovered from the first shock of the German defeat. “The Nazis are now quietly reorganising for a return to power by capturing control of the very democratic institutions that we have created,” say the correspondents. “The majority of those who were interviewed blame these conditions on American haste in turning over responsibility and authority to the Germans before they were ready for them, and also on the reluctance of American Army officers to encourage the liberal political elements who alone can be depended on in future to form a bulwark against political reaction favouring dictatorship and militarism.

Dr. Hoegner’s Warning. “The American-appointed Minis-ter-President of Bavaria (Dr. Hoegner) did not speak idly when he said recently that an American withdrawal would be followed by chaos j and civil war. Others who are even less optimistic say that in Bavaria | there would not even be civil war— Dr. Hoegner and others who collaborated with the Americans would be liquidated or put into concentration camps, and the Nazis under one name or another would be back in power inside months or even weeks. “Many Nazi families continue to occupv comfortable homes undisturbed and also have vast sums of cash. They do not need to work and can live comfortably on the black market. “The hills and mountains of Upper Bavaria are reported to be full of hidden S.S. men and soldiers who have the advantage of huge stocks of food, arms, and funds prepared as far back as 1943, when it first appeared that Germany might lose the war.” German Left Wings. German reactionaries and -warmongers were again emerging unci the great landowners were employin'* army officers to organise terrorist groups to fight against German democracy, said Ruhr delegates to the Left Wing conference in Berlin. The Left Wing groups m Berlin, the Social-Democrats and Communists who last week decided to merge into the “Social Party of Union,” deferred the final act of fusion until to-morrow. They declared that the new party was determined to work harmoniously with the occupying forces in all zones. The defeiment follows the official British refusal to recognise the merger in the Bntish zone.